Continuing our series of unusual (and amusing) deaths.
The beauty aid business is a multi-billion pound global industry as many of us seek to find the elixir of life and enhance our physical appearance, if only temporarily. Some people are martyrs to the cause of enhancing our looks. Just consider the case of Eben Byers who was a wealthy American socialite, industrialist and amateur golf champion, winning the US Amateur golf championship in 1906.
His demise centres around the early twentieth century mania for radium and radiation.
Scientists noticed that the waters of natural hot springs, which adherents claimed after immersing themselves in the waters to feel invigorated and renewed, were full of naturally occurring radon. This discovery led to companies seeking to make a profit from gullible narcissists by, first of all, bottling the spring water and selling it and then by developing radon-coated discs which could be put into containers to irradiate the waters. One such company was the Bailey Radium Laboratories Ltd, based in New Jersey, who between 1918 and 1928 manufactured Radithor, which was advertised as a cure for the living dead and as perpetual sunshine. Radithor contained high concentrations of radium in its soothing water and was supposed to stimulate the endocrine system. The head honcho of the company was one William Bailey, a Harvard drop-out without any formal medical qualifications.
Our hero, whilst travelling by train from the annual Harvard-Yale football (American) match in 1927, fell out of his berth and injured his arm. Complaining of a continual pain, he was recommended by his quack to take Radithor – I am sure that the 17% discount offered by Bailey to docs who prescribed the medicine had no influence on the choice of prescription.
Byers soon consumed copious quantities of the elixir (as many as three bottles a day and, it is calculated, some 1,400 bottles all told), believing that it was contributing to his growing sense of well-being. Unfortunately, he started to lose his teeth and because he had accumulated a high concentration of radium in his bones, holes started appearing in his skull, particularly the jaw, and his brain became abscessed. His eventual demise, coming on 31st March 1932 after a period of prolonged pain caused by the crumbling of his bones and resulting in the surgical removal of his jaw, was put down to radiation poisoning but was actually as a result of aggressive cancers brought on by the radon. Famously, it spawned the wonderful Wall Street Journal headline, “The Radium Water Worked Fine until His Jaw Came Off”.
Byers was buried in a lead-lined coffin. Bailey was never prosecuted but an order was issued against his business and Byer’s fate generated a heightened awareness of the dangers of taking radioactive materials. The irrepressible Bailey set up another company – the Radium Institute of New York – and marketed a radioactive belt clip, a radioactive paperweight and a mechanism to make water radioactive. Some people never seem to learn!
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